I was trying to install Fedora on an older laptop which "only" took about 10h ;)
Anyway, at first I thought it may be a Fedora issue and tried to got advice on the fedora forum. Unfortunately it seems that this is not Fedora related as I have the exact same issue with Linux Mint. The previous Win install was fast and HDD access rates are normal.

I've identified the HDD as the culprit for long install/ unresponsive system in general after looking at a few stats.

I also noticed when running the mint live-CD that the internet connection goes down during HDD r/w operation, while the system was usable in general
ping shows:

Code:

ping: sendmsg: No buffer space available

on the installed Fedora(fresh 17 install) system on the other hand, the system got unresponsive for several seconds in regular intervals during HDD operations.

Please let me know if you need any additional information. I attached the dmesg from the linux mint live right after boot... there were no dmesg coming up after that.

I hope someone can help me out!

Cheers

TobiSGD

01-10-2013 10:28 AM

There seems to be something wrong with that machine, I would recommend to run some basic tests: Memtest86+, the disk manufacturer's diagnosis tool, also have a look at the temperatures of that machine.

captainralf

01-10-2013 10:35 AM

why do you think it's the machine?

It runs fine using windows... also I forgot to mention, attached USB disks work fine under Linux.

TobiSGD

01-10-2013 10:53 AM

Windows is not Linux, they handle hardware different, so it may be that Windows (especially with manufacturer proved drivers) has a different way to handle the errors you are seeing in your dmesg log.
From my experience, Linux is more prone to act weird when hardware failures occur than Windows.
So to rule out hardware errors I recommended to make some basic hardware tests first. If the tests are passed successfully we know for sure that it must be a software issue.

business_kid

01-10-2013 02:34 PM

A hidden issue in installing distros like Fedora is that they have to sit down and figure out the dependencies of each rpm and check to see if you have or are going to install them. The smaller your memory, the longer that takes.

In a case with a disc that slow, I have always compiled a kernel with the correct chipset driver compiled in and the generic driver excluded. What is inclined to happen is that generic is tried first, and you get a message

Quote:

pci not 100% native, will probe irqs later

But then no other chipset driver can have the ide, because 'generic' has it. This can give a huge improvement. This sort of thing can produce bottlenecks, so I wouldn't worry about the net going down on a live cd. It does mean you'll probably have to install overnight on the slow disk, and then build the kernel to get your improvement.

captainralf

01-10-2013 04:16 PM

Thanks for the explanation Tobi.

would you mind letting me know what in the dmesg made you think it could be a hardware issue? - just for future reference :)

I did the memtest and an extensive HDD test with manufacturer tool, both reported no errors.
Had a look at temps and they were all pretty average.

There was another suggestion on the Fedora forum to do a fsck check.
That one gave back "Bad magic number" which wasn't fixable with backup superblocks, but only by partitioning the drive again - gparted for some reason resulted in the same error, so I used some program of Hiren's boot cd...
Anyway, after that fsck was fine, nevertheless the error remained the same :(

@business_kid:
uhmm... I did built a kernel ONCE and I had a step-by-step tutorial. While I'm sure there'll be a good tutorial to compile the kernel, I'm not sure how I'd have to change the parameters to get rid of this issue - that is what I'd have to do right? also, is there a way for me not to have to do another 10h install before building the kernel?

Thanks both for your input and I appreciate any additional input :)
cheers

TobiSGD

01-10-2013 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by captainralf
(Post 4867292)

Thanks for the explanation Tobi.

would you mind letting me know what in the dmesg made you think it could be a hardware issue? - just for future reference :)

ok thanks - I saw those but didn't have a clue what it was supposed to tell me ;)

Do you have any additional input what might be worthwhile to attempt?

TobiSGD

01-10-2013 07:33 PM

As the error messages suggest, it may help to boot with the irqpoll kernel option.

captainralf

01-10-2013 08:20 PM

1 Attachment(s)

yes... please pardon my ignorance :redface:

so, I just tried that with the Mint live cd. Unfortunately nothing changed and I should have done it correctly as I could find it in the Kernel command line in the dmesg output. On the other hand, it still suggests to use irqpoll...
Please have a look at the attached dmesg.